


Vivisection of the Soul

by faege



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-05
Updated: 2009-11-05
Packaged: 2017-10-17 23:00:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/182224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faege/pseuds/faege
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He knew grief well enough to see the symptoms in someone else.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Vivisection of the Soul

**Author's Note:**

> Written for spn_30snapshots.

Sam was bent over the toilet bowl when Dean came in, clutching the porcelain like his life depended on it. His face was flushed, sweat crawling from his temples, tears sliding down his cheeks, sour spit coating his chin. He looked up as Dean entered with desperate eyes, the eyes of a drowning man, but Dean didn’t think Sam really saw him. The next minute he was folded over the toilet again, retching and choking on air. Dean put a hand to Sam’s back, afraid to touch him, afraid to even ask where it hurt—Sam looked like he could scream from the pain if Dean so much as came near—but he laid a hand on Sam’s trembling back and tried to soak up the sweat and silent screams for him.

He knew grief well enough to see the symptoms in someone else.

“What’s wrong?” he asked anyway, hoping Sam would keep breathing this time and not seize up like his lungs were only used to retching and not to inhaling.

Sam looked at him with wide eyes, got out a strangled moan before he hid his face in his hands and curled forward, hunching until he was on his knees, face-down on the dirty tile. The broad back stuttered to a stop for a moment under Dean’s hand, then shuddered with another breath before Dean had to turn Sam over and _make him_ breathe.

So that was it, then. Grief couldn’t be put into stages. It was too painful to dissect like that, something of a vivisection of the soul. And Dean’s brother was feeling his soul lose to the scalpel at that moment, 3:43 a.m., and there was nothing Dean could do about it.

Instead he waited, sat cross-legged next to his barely-breathing brother and let his hand weigh on Sam’s head. He didn’t move. His clumsy caresses only made it worse, riled Sam up instead of calming him. He just stayed, breathed, _was_ next to Sam. And that was what Sam needed.

At 4:09 he asked quietly, “Who is it, Sam?”

Sam had turned on his side, curled so that his legs banked Dean’s back, his torso pressed against Dean’s bent leg, his hands tangled up to take fistfuls of Dean’s jeans. His red-rimmed eyes stared at nothing, fixed at some point between the future and the past, and Dean knew the answer was _You_. Sam clung to him, arms locked in some sort of standstill, and Dean knew the struggle he saw there. Sam was looking with his blank eyes at the almost-year he spent without Dean, the first months made up of a slew of Tuesdays, the rest made up of four months alone. Survival instinct told him to push away, to keep Dean fenced off—it’s terrifying to look at the rest of your life and think that there are endless months ahead in which your only brother could be whisked away and you’ll have to relearn how to do basic things like breathe and swallow bile. Dean hoped that Sam was listening harder to the other side of him, the side that was telling him to keep Dean close, to cherish all the time they had left, to stop worrying about tomorrow and be with Dean today. That part of Sam was telling him to fold Dean in, pull him close until he’s absorbed into Sam. Only then could Sam be safe, function normally, when Dean’s so close it doesn’t cripple him anymore.

Yeah, Dean could never figure out how either.

So, he mused, hand heavy on Sam’s head while Sam’s soul was heavy on his, so this is how the Winchesters cope—they don’t. Caught in a standstill with themselves, fighting to survive but wanting to live, holding each other so tightly they can’t let go or pull closer. Dean lasted almost a week. Sam scattered the time over almost twelve months.

Funny how they both end up choking on air on the bathroom floor.  



End file.
